


Dreaming And Awake

by Jenavira



Category: Saiyuki, Sandman
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Short, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-10
Updated: 2010-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-11 00:59:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenavira/pseuds/Jenavira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of Saiyuki/Sandman ficlets, one per Endless (as you do).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But Rather Darkness Visible--Destiny::Nataku

It isn't dreams that Nataku slips into, bleeding and bandaged and only marginally safer in the Heavens than he is Down There, but something broader and darker and far more real. While he lies painfully in his rooms, recovering from his battle with Gyumaoh (_all alone_), he walks a vast labyrinth, more winding and frightening than anything the heavenly palaces have ever had to offer. The tops of the damp stone walls (_huge green hedges_) vanish into the darkness above him, and he can feel the weight of his father's gaze. The labyrinth is all darkness and shadow, and Nataku tries to seek out the lightest passages, but even these seem black and musty. He is sure there is a light somewhere in here (_long way back_) but he cannot find his way to it.

He comes out into a vast, open room, the ceiling so high it might as well be the night sky, and although it ought to be comforting to be out of the twisting passages and into open space, it is not. Scattered throughout are many statues, some figures he recognizes, and many he does not. There is a cluster of Kanzeon, and her golden-haired nephew, and two men in the uniform of the Western Army, and a long-haired youkai with terrifying claws. They make him sad, and he does not know why.

Standing among the statues (_another one_) is a man in a long dark robe, like a traveler's cloak. Nataku approaches him cautiously, resisting the urge to run (_made for this_) because he knows it will do no good. When the man turns, the chains binding him to his book clank together with a sound like forever. The book is as large as the labyrinth, and at least as frightening. Impassively, the man looks straight at Nataku, and then over to a branching passage in the far end of the garden. Nataku wants to shake his head in refusal (_not fair_) but he walks over to stand in front of the passageway anyway, looking down the two corridors, both equally dark and impenetrable.

Back in the Imperial Palace, his room is lush and comfortable and bleak and empty. He expects nothing else. Turning his face to the door, watching should someone chance to come in (_en garde_), the War Prince rejects sleep in favor of watchfulness. He has had enough of visions.


	2. She Kindly Stopped For Me--Death::Gonou

As he stumbled out of Hyakugan Maoh's castle, bleeding and dying and wounded on top of it, he met a beautiful black-haired girl. She was going in as he was going out, which seemed a little odd, but she wasn't youkai so Gonou couldn't really bring himself to care. She surprised him so much, though, that he fell against the doorframe a little, and once he was there it seemed like a good place to continue being. The beautiful girl looked at him sadly, the rain pouring off her white umbrella like a mourning veil. He fingered the limiters in his pocket, scavenged from some corpse or other in the castle; he wondered if he ought to put them on. It seemed the polite thing to do, but he was worried that the vines were the only thing holding him together. They certainly felt like it -- they itched on his skin like restraints, and he could hardly bear the thought of losing them.

Then, the girl smiled at him, a broad, generous smile, and she seemed genuinely pleased to see him, which was insane because there was no one in the world who would be pleased to see him now.

"Keep going," she told him kindly. "There's a village down in the foothills. But if you don't make it, I'll come back for you."

That sounded like a wonderful idea, even though she was pretty and smiling and kind and her dress was so pure a white it made Gonou recoil even though he was already so far away from her there was no chance he could soil it with the blood on his hands.

"Where are you going?" he asked, confused, and still not sure why.

The girl smiled at him, a little sadly this time. "Oh, I have business here," she said.

He wanted to say something to that, maybe, What sort of business could you have in there with these monsters? or, I do apologize, but I think I've killed everyone inside; but she was already gone, her dress a swatch of pure white flickering in the dark, bloody corridors of the castle, so Gonou turned out into the rain.

 

He thought he saw her again, months later, in the temple of Chang'an. He was standing beside Sanzo, who was knocking impatiently on the doors of the inner sanctum, and he was contemplating his imminent punishment when he felt someone bump into him from behind. When he turned around, he was shocked to see the same pretty girl, in the same white dress, hurrying down the temple corridor. When she reached the corner, she turned and gave him a quick wink and a wave.

"I thought you said you were ready for this." Sanzo was glaring at him impatiently with a look that said, very clearly, let's just get this over with so I can go have a smoke.

"Of course," he said vaguely, and stepped through the golden doors to his fate.


	3. In The Cavern of Nightmares and Dreams--Dream::Goku

The cave was dark and cold and infinitely lonely, without even memories to keep him company. It's hard enough to keep yourself company, when you can't even remember your own name. Or if you'd ever had a name, for that matter, or any need for one. Because if you'd always lived in a cave like this, what need would you have for a name?

The cave even pervaded his dreams, for when he dreamed, he dreamed he was in a cave. This one didn't have bars across the mouth, but he still had his chains, and it was still dark and cold and lonely, and deep enough that he couldn't even see the sun. There was a raven that sometimes hopped in and looked at him critically, but it never stayed. And sometimes he thought he heard a woman singing outside, at the mouth of the cave. He never went out from the back of the cave to look, because he was afraid of what might be out there. He was afraid there might be nothing.

One dream the woman stopped singing, and he wished he could wake himself up, because without the singing or the raven the dream cave was worse that the real one, but then the shadows moved in the dim, grey light that filters into the back of the cave. A woman appeared, and looked at him, but then she stepped aside.

Behind her was a tall, thin man, pale as the snow that sometimes falls on the mountainside. His hair and coat and eyes were so black they seemed to suck the darkness out of the cave. The man looked cold, and he shivered.

"Thank you, Eve," the pale man said, "for bringing this to my attention." The woman nodded, and watched.

He thought he ought to be scared, but -- "Am I still dreaming?" he asked. He had to know. And it wasn't a very nice dream, anyway, if he still had to wake up and be all alone.

The pale man looked almost amused. "You are," he said.

"Then how come," he asked, "how come I always gotta dream about being in a cave? I gotta stay in a cave all the time anyway, why can't I dream about something else?"

The pale man looked at him, at the coronet around his head, at the chains he wore, and he felt embarrassed. But then the pale man said, "You have no memories, little saru, and without memories the Dreaming does not know what to do with you. A cave is all you know, and so, somehow, the Dreaming brought you to this one." The pale man glanced over at the woman, who was looking back at him expectantly. "And yet," he said thoughtfully, his face relaxing and looking just a little less formidable. "Even mortals do not dream only of the past, and you are far from mortal, little one." The pale man rested a hand in his hair, a gesture he found oddly familiar, and he woke up.

The next night, he dreamed of the sun.


	4. In the Line of Duty--Destruction::Dokugakuji

Dokugakuji hadn't been there long, but then again, it shouldn't take anybody long to realize that Houtou Castle was the most bastarding obnoxious winding labrynth of a building ever built by living hands. He was pretty sure he'd gotten lost in it at least once every single day of the month he'd lived there, which was probably why it took him so long to notice something was wrong, walking back (hopefully) to his quarters from the soldiers' practice ground one day. It was with more than mild distress that he realized he'd accidentally ended up in the laboratory section of the castle. A month was well long enough for him to have figured out that he wanted to stay the hell out of Ni Jianyi's way, if he knew what was good for him.

It was not, unfortunately, enough to squash his unnatural curiosity, he thought sadly, as he couldn't resist sticking his head through a couple of doors to see what was going on. The wing seemed to be deserted at the moment, but the banks of machinery and electrical equipment that hummed with a perverse life of their own. It made his blood itch, and he had the disturbing feeling that all this stuff didn't like him. "At least it's mutual," he muttered, flinching to hear the way his voice was swallowed up by the hum of the electrics.

But then from across the hall, he heard --

"It's this kind of thing that makes you wonder about mortals, eh sister?"

That voice didn't get swallowed by the machinery; it boomed out over the top of everything like thunder, making Dokugakuji sure that there would be scientists come running any second just to make sure that their delicate experiments hadn't been ruined by the seismic boom. No way in hell was that one of Ni's minions. Which meant that it was an intruder, which meant that someone should do something about it, which meant that Doku was no longer snooping around unauthorized in the science labs but was in fact doing his job. Right.

He crept across the hallway and pressed his eye to the crack in the door he thought the voice had come from, and was damn near blinded for his trouble. When he blinked away the afterimages and looked again, this time more cautiously, he could see that the room had not acquired a dozen new (and unfairly bright) light sources but just one extremely large, extremely well-armored man. He reflected the blinking lights of the equipment bays in such a way that they looked less like an abomination living in the basement than they probably had any right to do.

From this angle he couldn't see the person the huge man was talking to, but he did hear a woman say, "This isn't really my area, Destruction." She said it like it was a title or a name, which made a twisted kind of sense; but she also said it with affection, which was just creepy.

"All this technology," he said, as if she hadn't spoken, "and what do they use it for? To make people kill each other. Not with technology, mind. Just -- well."

The woman sounded bored, but not unsympathetic. "It wouldn't be the first time."

"And it won't be the last. It only seems -- well," he said, with exaggerated formality, "our dear brother Dream might argue that this is all the result of one man's vision. And he might well be right. I only observe that he could not have built it all alone. And what kind of people are building his world for him, I have to wonder?" he finished, turning to look directly at the crack in the laboratory door.

Hell with this. Dokugakuji was learning to put up with a lot of crazy shit in the service of Lord Kougaji, but this was completely beyond the pale. Creeping away as fast as he could without making a sound, he dove gratefully back into the maze of corridors, which eventually tossed him back out near the throne room, only marginally less creepy but at least he knew where the hell he was. Doku never quite managed to forget what he had seen, though it never did make any kind of sense, and he stayed way the hell away from the science labs after that.


	5. Attatchment--Desire::Sanzo

_If you meed the Buddha, kill him._ He's said it so many times that he thinks he actually might, if he ever got the chance. Hell, he'd have killed a bodhisattva before now if he thought it'd do any good. But as a philosophy, at least, it has stood him in good stead. It makes things less important, and thus less annoying. Goku's constant demands, Hakkai's demanding politeness, Gojyo's unholy lack of the concept of personal space -- it doesn't matter, because he doesn't care. Screw 'em.

It doesn't mean just people, though, and sometimes Sanzo feels like he's the only one who realizes that, really, it's not like their quest actually matters. If they die, they die, and karma (or maybe that meddling old hag, or if he's really unlucky, both) will sort them out. If the world ends, the gods will probably just create a new one, and it might even suck less than this one, though he doesn't have a whole lot of optimism.

The only thing he can't quite pretend indifference to is his sutra, and while most of it he covers with the practical fact that if Kougaji's people get their hands on it his life will be even more annoying than it is now, he still can't get rid of the underlying mine whenever somebody else goes after it. He knows it's a weakness, one of the few he has left, and one day it too will pass, just like everything else.

 

Contrary to popular opinion, Desire does not always play games with its siblings. Sometimes it just plays games with its people.


	6. O, Do Not Forsake Me -- Gojyo::Despair

It's Sunday afternoon, and Gojyo is doing his chores, as he always does on Sunday afternoon, when Jien goes down to town and Mother is (usually) at her best, or at least not so bad. She's happiest when he makes himself useful, anyway, and keeps out of her way, so he starts in the kitchen with the washing-up from lunch. When he's finished, he sweeps the floor tidily before moving on.

Usually he'll do the living room next, but Mother isn't taking her nap today, so he opens the back door and sweeps out his and Jien's bedroom, piling up the laundry as he goes. He does that last, taking it down to the creek after Jien comes home. Mother likes to be left all alone even less than she likes to be left alone with him.

He stays out of Mother's room.

The living room is a mess today; Mother has not been well and there are broken bits of things all over. He carefully sweeps up the pieces of a broken vase and ushers them out the door, leaving them in a little pile next to the stoop where no one will step on them. A tall mirror that used to lean against the wall is broken into large pieces, so he picks them up one by one. He is careful not to cut himself, but once he tilts a piece in just such a way that he finds himself staring his reflection in the face. He looks grey and pale, which only makes his hair and eyes stand out even more. He shudders and flings the shard against the wall, where it shatters into the drying puddle of blood around the body. He wraps his arms around himself and stands there, shaking for a little while, then goes to get a mop.

It's Sunday afternoon, and Gojyo is doing his chores, as he always does on Sunday afternoon. And in her grey, misty realm, Despair tears her hooked ring through her cheek and watches.


	7. Slate Flowers and Wine -- Komyou::Delirium

The night was warm and very beautiful, so Komyou took himself out to the western pavilion to sit with a pipe and a cup of wine and wait. He could not, if pressed, have said just what he was waiting for, but it was a waiting sort of night, so he waited. Possibly, he reflected, he was waiting for his apprentice Koryuu, who would very likely come out and scold him for drinking and smoking where the other monks could see. The boy seemed very concerned about what the other monks thought of their Sanzo priest, and Komyou frequently wondered when he would realize that the mere being a Sanzo was usually enough, and most people never bothered to think beyond that.

His attention was caught by a spot of bright color flitting between the pillars on the opposite side of the pavilion. He admired, for a while, the contrast between unnaturally blue hair and the pale brown of the temple wall. Finally, a small face peered out from around the pillar. It was indeed the face attached to the unnaturally blue hair, for its eyes were half hidden behind unnaturally blue bangs. Floating about a foot above the hair was a shockingly orange fish. Komyou was impressed; he had never seen a fish alive out of water for so long.

"Hello," he said politely.

The face was joined by the rest of a small person, possibly about Koryuu's age (or a little younger) (or, indeed, a little older), who appeared, despite the hair, to be human. She grinned and dashed across the pavilion toward him. "I came here to see you," she told him. "At least, I think I came here. I came to see somebody, and I'm here, and so are you. Would you hold my fish?"

"Absolutely," Komyou said, taking hold of the string the small person handed to him. The fish bobbed about in the air over their heads, looking vaguely displeased at being handed around like this. The small person sat down on the flagstones, which immediately sprouted a dozen or so small, flagstone-colored flowers. She looked up at the clear sky and said, "The clouds are very unhappy today. Someone told me that once. I wonder if it's still true."

There was a rustle from one of the temple doors -- Koryuu, no doubt, come to chase him back inside -- and the small person looked startled and a little sheepish. "Oops," she said, and scrambled to her feet, kicking over most of the flowers as she did so, and hurried away. Halfway across the courtyard she turned, called out happily, "You may keep my fish! I think he likes you best," waved, and was gone.

Behind him, in a tone of immense disapproval, the voice of his young apprentice said, "You really shouldn't talk to people who don't exist in places where others can see you." He did indeed sound just like he did when telling his master not to smoke or drink where the other monks could see him, either, with the faint undertone of One day someone's head will explode from the shock, and I'll be the one who has to clean it up.

Komyou smiled cheerfully; it was nice to have such consistency in his life. "Ah, Koryuu," he said. "Do you suppose you could fetch a pitcher of water for this fish? It has done all right so far, but I can't imagine it's very happy like this."

Koryuu sighed, and went to get a pitcher.


End file.
